Nothing says “I love you” like a bullet to the heart in Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra (The Black Ball), an unashamedly romantic decades-spanning drama that emerged in the last days of a very austere Cannes Film Festival as a possible dark horse Palme d’Or winner. It’s long even by Cannes standards, […]

Pedro Almodóvar was asked by one Spanish journalist at today’s Cannes press conference for his pic Bitter Christmas about “Hollywood being in crisis and Canal+ threatening creators.” The latter refers to Canal+ Chair and CEO, the Maxime Saada, who said that the conglom won’t work with those who signed the Time To Switch-Off Bolloré” petition which sounded […]

I traveled to Newport Beach this week to moderate a rollicking panel with the cast of Apple TV’s hit series Shrinking. And right after I introduced them, Ed O’Neill came on stage at the landmark’s 86-year-old Lido Theatre to present them with the four-day festival’s Outstanding Comedy Ensemble Award. Shrinking has been racking up a […]

Rodrigo Teixeira’s Brazil-based RT Features, producer of 2025 Oscar winner “I’m Still Here” and James Gray’s 2026 Cannes contender “Paper Tiger,” has boarded “Bodies of Summer,” a sci-fi drama from Iván Fund who won a Berlin Film Festival 2025 Silver Bear Jury Prize for “The Message.” Argentina’s Fund is set to direct “Bodies of Summer” […]

Tribeca Festival, which kicks off Wednesday, will be thumping to music from its opening moments. The 25th edition of the festival in Lower Manhattan debuts with the world premiere of Earth, Wind & Fire: To Be Celestial vs. That’s the Weight of the World, the latest documentary from Oscar winner Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. It closes June 14 […]

“Afterpiece,” a Hong Kong drama produced by Derek Yee and directed by debut filmmaker Keane T.K. Wong, will world premiere as the opening film of the 28th Shanghai International Film Festival, which runs June 12-21. The film centers on Owen, a once-celebrated stage director who has spent more than a decade in creative paralysis. When […]

Saturday Night Live’s James Austin Johnson gave the Tribeca Festival a taste, and analysis, of his celebrated stream-of consciousness Donald Trump impression. He often wings it. “It wouldn’t feel like Trump if there wasn’t this queasy feeling in the audience of ‘what is he going to say?’ and so I have to improvise for the […]

According to “FBI” star Zeeko Zaki, it’s no longer shocking that an Arab-American Muslim is the lead in a TV show. “Which was the goal, of course. But then, at the same time, I’m still the only one,” he told journalists at Monte-Carlo Television Festival.  “There’s still a bigger fight for representation on TV. And there’s […]

EXCLUSIVE: Gebeka Films has acquired French distribution rights to Oscar-nominated filmmaker Louise Bagnall’s animated feature Julián ahead of its world premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival later this month. The picture is produced by five-time Academy Award-nominated Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon, the award-winning animation production house behind The Secret of Kells, Song […]

In Memoriam, which just had its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival this week, has a very funny premise. An egotistical, rather neurotic actor finds out he is dying and has only one goal left in life: to make sure he is included on the Oscars’ “In Memoriam” reel. Considering the pain that reel creates […]

EXCLUSIVE: Vienna-based sales agency Square Eyes has acquired international sales rights for Belgian director Isabelle Tollenaere’s displacement drama Paris Paris ahead of its premiere in the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s Proxima sidebar in July. The drama follows three men from China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Palestine living together in a squatted apartment […]

About the Ottawa International Animation Festival

The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) has provided animation and entertainment since 1976. The second oldest film institute in the world and also the hub of animation in Canada, has a lot to offer. The festival will be held online from September 22 to October 3, 2021.

Ottawa International Animation Festival Shorts Competition 3

Comeback

Director: Vladimir Leschiov 
From: Latvia & Lithuania
About: It’s never too late for a comeback.

electric + 

Director: Brandon Blommaert 
From: Canada
About: A slow sensuous dance gives way to a technical barrage of prismatic shards of love.

Papa Zaza

Director: Géraldine Charpentier
From: Belgium
About:  Fleur and her brothers’ games are put on hold when their father, Zaza, is taken to the hospital.

World Brain ‘Dance II (Discovery Zone Cover)’

Director: Julian Gallese 
From: Costa Rica & Germany
About: A dream computer land inhabited by animals that like to party and frequent museums.

Babičino seksualno življenje (Granny’s Sexual Life) 

Director: Urška Djukić & Emilie Pigeard 
From:  Slovenia & France 
About: A trip into grandmother’s youth and the memories of her intimate life illustrate the status of Slovenian women in the first half of the 20th century.

Festivalska špica Animafest Zagreb 2020 (Animafest Zagreb 2020 Festival Trailer) 

Director: Yoriko Mizushiri 
From: Croatia 
About: A trailer for the Animafest Zagreb 2020.

Nichts (Nothing) 

Director: Paul Hartmann 
From: Germany 
About: Since nothing really matters why not change things.

Rites of Spring 

Director: Yiorgos Tsangaris 
From: Cyprus 
About: The Christian Orthodox tradition and traveling theatre troupes with their pagan roots are two seemingly opposite worlds, both mysterious and enchanting.

Dior ‘A New Continent’ 

Director: Bárbara Cerro 
From: Argentina
About: Femininity in the world of animation according to Dior.

Impossible Figures and Other Stories

Director: Marta Pajek
From: Poland & Canada
About: Following an explosion, a mysterious and elegant elderly woman wanders deserted city streets, recalling what was and what could have been.